1 Journalist Killed in Greece since 1992/Motive Confirmed

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2015

1992

Sokratis Giolias

Thema 98.9, Troktiko

July 19, 2010, in Athens, Greece

Two unidentified men in police uniforms shot and killed Giolias, 37, director of Thema Radio and contributor to the popular news website Troktiko, news reports said. The killers lured Giolias out of his apartment in Ilioupolis, a suburb of Athens, around 5 a.m., claiming his car was being stolen, and shot him more than a dozen times, according to news reports.

The Associated Press said forensic experts had collected 16 bullet casings from the murder scene that Athens police said matched two 9 mm handguns used by a local radical group called Sect of Revolutionaries, which formed during widespread rioting over a police shooting of a teenage boy in December 2008. Athens police also found the burned remnants of a sedan they believed was the killers' getaway car, AP reported.

The BBC, quoting Giolias' colleagues, said the reporter had been working on a corruption-related story, the details of which were not clear. Panos Sobolos, president of the Athens Journalists' Union, said that Giolias was murdered because he "had stepped on a lot of toes with his stories," Reuters reported. Thema Radio is a news and entertainment broadcaster; Troktiko often covered controversial social and political issues.